Prologue

When the first of what would be many foster homes received Griffin, they were not prepared in the slightest, despite the large number of red flags.

It was believed by most, in that very small town of Griffin, Tennessee, that the boy's mother must have come well after midnight, yet just before the sun rose; her new-born child bound snuggly in a white blanket and placed exactly in a small basket that she carried with her. There were a few reasons why most believed in this timeline. The biggest being that no one saw her, and most people in the town were early risers, getting up at 5 am or earlier. The church that she left her child on the steps of was close to many of those early eyes, and it wasn't even six in the morning when the first nosey neighbor found him. If he was there for hours, he should have been cold and crying, but Griffin was instead warm and content. Others later came to the conclusion that this was just the first bad omen.

The practice of leaving babies on the steps of churches had mostly been forgotten and struck most as an odd choice. The church was in no way a monastery (the people of the town would have not even known what that word meant) so the soonest that a member of the church would have arrived there would have been days away, and the baby would have starved. It would have been better if the baby did cry, and it was great, for once, that those neighbors were so invasive. The authorities were called right away.

No one could identify the child or even have a lead of where he might have come from. It was just a guess that his mother had placed him there, but in reality it could have been anyone. This came as a surprise to the authorities, not only because of the close-knitted community of the town, but also because of the child's genetic abnormalities. Despite appearing anything but Caucasian, his hair was jet-black, and his eyes were an alarming shade of red. However, he was brought into a hospital soon after he was found and checked out with a clean bill of health.

Children are often seen as innocent at first, and there was quickly a large number of hands ready to take him in. It was finally decided that a family fostering a few older children and raising one new infant of their own, would take Griffin. They lived far from the town that Griffin had been abandoned in, but it was the only family that had the age-appropriate items ready for him, as well as the breast milk to feed him with. This family did not expect to have a child with his looks very long and had high hopes of hearing from his biological family soon.

But his family did not reach out to claim him, and the Halls where stuck with raising him. As far as infants go, there wasn't too much that was different about Griffin other than his speed of growth. Despite being a little over half a year younger than the Halls' boy, Griffin was the first to sit up, walk, talk, and learn. He didn't beat the Halls' boy by just a few days in these areas, but by months, and was steadily growing to be a much bigger toddler than the other boy would ever be.

At first, the Halls were only delighted that Griffin was healthy, as most would suspect that an abandoned child may have some kind of unwanted disability. But soon, a thought creeped into the pair's mind that it may have just been Griffin's eyes. As he grew, they grew brighter, and brighter, without losing one bit of red pigment. Even when Griffin was smiling, his eyes seem to tell a story that was anything but happy. Despite all of the Halls' good intentions, they couldn't get past the thought that maybe that this little boy was evil.

It was when Griffin got a taste of throwing and biting that the Halls claimed that having two toddlers was just too many, and they sent him back to his original town to another foster home, without mentioning a word of their worries. Because of this, the foster home had the same good intentions as the Halls and treated him like the small, wounded child they thought he be. But Griffin didn't share these thoughts at all. He liked the Halls, sure, but he also didn't feel that strongly attached to them. Unconsciously, the Halls' worries had had an effect on how they treated him, and Griffin was often held at an arm's length. Knowing little else, that became his normal, and it was a long time before he became attached to anyone at all.

In his new home, Griffin instated his new rein of terror. There was something funny to him about how scared the other children were of him. Even funnier that the adults were afraid too. He found that violence often yielded the fastest results whenever he wanted something, and he loved being able to give orders, instead of following them. This new home did not want to give up on Griffin so easily, and he ended up staying with them until around the age of 4, when they finally decided that he was too much of a terror. It was then he was sent to a new home, far away, that delt with these kinds of troubled children.

This was possibly the worst thing that could have happened. In the new foster home, Griffin met many other children who favored violence too, and quickly learned that the world he lived in had a strict pecking order. He refused to be on the bottom, and so he bullied, kicked, bit, and punched his way to the top. From these children, he only learned how to be more effective, and by the time he was in the 1st grade, he had been shipped off once again.

Griffin hardly ever stayed in one place for more than a couple of months after this. Sometimes, he only would last a couple of weeks before his caretakers of the time would be too concerned of the safety of the other children, and then would send him away. Each new place had their own ideas of how to tame this wild child, and each failed. To Griffin, this was all just a giant game, and he relished that no one could beat him at it. He was the toughest, meanest kid anywhere, and there was nothing anyone could do.

As one might guess, Griffin had never even been considered for adoption. There were interviews with couples looking for a child, but he would never let it go farther than that. With new people, he found that being as cruel as possible, and as quickly as possible, worked in his favor. This way, he wouldn't have to work so hard at being cruel later. It started to sink in everyone's mind that he would be the system's problem forever, and maybe even the world's problem soon.

One day, when Griffin was eight years old, he suspected that his caretakers were going to meet up to discuss him. They seemed off during the entire day and kept giving him side glances when they thought he wasn't paying attention. When they all suddenly went into the upstairs office together, as quietly as they could, Griffin was fully convinced.

Another skill that Griffin had developed over the years was quietness. He often snuck up on others to hear what he would otherwise miss, and to catch people by surprise. So, without letting the wooden stairs or floors creak even once, he snuck his way to the closed door of the office and leaned his ear in close.

"Is it time that we send him somewhere else, too?" a voice said. Griffin knew the face, but not the name it belonged to, nor did he care to learn it. It often wasn't valuable to learn names when he knew he wouldn't be in one place too long anyways.

"I don't know," a woman answered. "When I read all the notes and reports, I didn't want to believe them. I mean, have you ever met a child that was so mean? And for no good reason either."

"So, what do you want to do, then? Keep him?" another scoffed. "Why do we think we're better abled than any of the other homes he's been to. We have nothing to offer him here, and the other children are starting to be afraid to come home from school."

This made Griffin smile. He had only been at this location for a short week and he was already too much to handle. He worked hard, and his hard work was yielding the correct results, faster than ever.

"But where will he go?" the woman wondered, aloud. "No one wants to take him. They moved him across so many states' borders, trying to find somewhere where he will behave, but it's not working. I don't know how I'll convince anyone to try him out."

There was some scraping then, the sound of someone pushing a stair back and standing up. A couple of paces back and forth gave off shadows for Griffin to watch from under the door. "What about a foster with no other kids? If there's no one else's safety worry about, maybe he'll be able to stay put."

"What about the caretakers' safety?" someone answered. "And no one fostering for the first time wants a challenge straight away. Even if they did…"

The trailing off confused Griffin. Everyone else in the room was silent, not bothering to ask what her unsaid words meant, so they must have known what she would have said. But Griffin had no idea. Even if they did want a challenge, what would stop them?

"Yes, those eyes," another voiced tuned in, almost as answering Griffin's thoughts. "How could you see past those eyes?"

This too, confused him. Without thinking, he lifted a hand to his face, trying to work out what he had heard. To everyone else, this conversation should have been straight forward, but no one had ever challenged Griffin's looks to his face. He wasn't stupid; he knew that the others didn't have the same color eyes as him. But not everyone had brown eyes, or blue. Some people had green, and others, more rarely, had a hazel that was closer to yellow. So what if he had red eyes? He couldn't understand how it made any difference.

He heard another voice, much quieter, and leaned back in. It was the woman, and her words came out shaky, frightened. "When I see them, I just think, how did God create such a hateful boy? I know that it's not rational, but sometimes… I think that he must really want to hurt us. Kill us, maybe."

It was then that he heard a quiet sob and the shuffle of the other coming to her side. There was then the quiet mummer of reassurance followed by agreeance, and he could no longer listen anymore. He tried to think back, as far as he could, to every instance where he thought he had fought his way to the top. He had made others do whatever he wanted, hadn't he? Because he was clever and strong, not because of his eyes.

He felt a sudden impulse to see for himself and took no precautions as he ran back downstairs. The sound reached the caretakers inside of the office, making the woman cry at such a volume that he could hear without trying to eavesdrop. As he ran towards the restroom, the other children stayed very clear of his path, jumping away if they needed to. For once, these things made him feel incredibly nauseous.

When he was at the door, he came to a halt and gave himself a mental pep-talk. It wasn't how they said it was, he was sure. Even if it was, that was only their opinions. He had only been there a week, there was no time for them to go off of anything else, was there? And in the past, even if it were just his eyes, what would that mean? He looked down at the doorknob and very lightly placed his hand on it. What would that mean?

The door opened, and he still didn't have an answer. He could already see himself before he entered, as the bathroom was laid out with a mirror over the sink, facing the door. He walked cautiously towards it, keeping his eyes locked on the red. As he watched, he came to the conclusion that he looked angry.

However, in that moment, he didn't feel any anger. He walked as close as he could and stared harder. They still looked angry. Very angry. He realized for the first time in years that his eyes had stopped growing brighter, and that there was now a small circle of a darker color around his pupils. The color was a darker, very different kind of red. Like when a cut is deep, and the blood comes out in too much of a hurry, pooling up on the skin.

Griffin realized that his throat was dry and swallowed. The sound was much too loud, almost echoing. He could hear his own heart beat throughout his head. A thought crept in that maybe, he too, was afraid of them.

He closed the door behind him by falling backwards on it and sliding to the floor. This knowledge hardly changed anything. Hadn't he got what he wanted regardless? Did it really matter that he had no hand in any of it? For some reason he couldn't figure out, it did matter.

When he appeared out of the bathroom, he was quiet. He didn't go to dinner when it was ready, but instead laid still on his bed. From the room, he could hear the others actually enjoying their dinner for the first time since he arrived. No one came to ask him if he was hungry or alright, but this wasn't surprising to him.

Another week passed and Griffin didn't say one single word. It made little difference in the eyes of his foster home. The children still avoided him, and the caretakers still found a place for him to move to. It was a much larger foster home than he had ever been to, down in the panhandle of Florida. When they told him to pack his things, he did so without a fight and without a sound.

Florida wasn't a state that Griffin had ever lived in before, although he had visited once during a stay at a different group home. He thought, for the second time of going there, that it was much too bright for his liking, and that he stuck out more than he usually would. He, of course, kept these complaints to himself. His muteness was half a part of his experiment, and other half a part of his depression.

At the home, he did everything he was told and little else. In his free time, he was either doing schoolwork, reading, or sleeping. He had no interaction with the other children, partly because he didn't approach them, and partly because they didn't approach him. He didn't start any fights, didn't look in anyone's direction, and didn't get in anyone's way. None of this mattered.

It was then that he figured out why his eyes bothered him so much. He didn't have anything to call his own, not really. He didn't have any memories, any accomplishments as he might have called them, without his eyes. He had no freedom. Griffin came to terms with the fact that he never really had any choice on who was afraid of him, and he thought he never would.

He began to miss things he never had. The more he meditated on his past, the more he envied his peers. Often, he wondered if he had ever really been happy with the way things were, or if there was some kind of high that came with being violent. He knew he felt frustration in the past for sure. People seemed so caught up in each other in ways his younger self didn't understand. People were a weakness he didn't want anything to do with. But now he was frustrated that he had no one.

Every day that passed and nothing changed, Griffin became more frustrated. He felt as if he was in a self-created solitary and was slowly approaching insanity. But to let himself go back to his old ways felt like a defeat in some way. Instead, he often hurried to his bed and tried to breathe, thumbing at an old necklace that he couldn't remember ever not having. Before all of this, the necklace had meant nothing to him. He only kept it because he was sure it was something that was abandoned with him, though no one ever told him so. It was a small, rounded, red piece of stone that hung from a black leather string, and was often stuffed under his shirt so it wouldn't swing and hit him when he was fighting another kid. But now, the stone was getting a frequent polish from a set of very anxious fingers.

There was one thing, however, that did change in his life at his new school. He no longer had the reputation he once had and was no longer defending it. Most of his classmates still stayed far away from him, as Griffin was still developing faster than the rest of the school. When someone mustered up enough courage to try to face him, he would only turn to look at them and they would turn and run away. While towering over them, his eyes conveyed a threat that he never intended. In fact, he wished that someone would knock him to the ground, if only to let people see him as non-threatening. But there was one kid who still persisted.

Griffin wasn't completely sure, but was mostly sure, that the kid's name was Charlie. Charlie was definitely afraid of Griffin, but even more afraid of looking like a wuss. From across any room, Charlie would yell out any insults he could think of in Griffin's direction. His friends would warn him in hushed tones not to do this, but that would only make Charlie ask, very loudly, what Griffin was going to do about it. Griffin never said a word or looked in his direction, always rubbing his stone. If they passed each other in the hallways, Charlie would make sure to ram him into any wall. This often would cause Griffin to lose balance and drop all of his books, but he only picked up his things and rubbed his stone.

Two months went by and Griffin was finally feeling some kind of victory. It was beginning to look like this home may have a longer stay this time, and he was being more careful than ever to stay out of everyone's way. He had even begun the practice of looking down at his feet always, to avoid any accidental glances. This continued to work only for another week when he was suddenly pulled into the office by the home's head.

"Do you know why I called you in here, Griffin?" the man said in a very soft voice. Griffin sat opposite of him with a desk centered between them but didn't look up. Instead, he fixated on a string that had loosened from the arm rest of the padded chair. He did know why he was there, but he wouldn't say it.

The man cleared his throat as a way of getting Griffin's attention, but after many moments passed by with no response, he continued anyways. "I'm afraid I can no longer have you staying here. The other fosters are complaining. They feel unsafe being under the same roof, due to your behavior these last months."

What behavior the man was talking about, Griffin had no idea. He could feel his frustration building up but thought better of making his hands into fists. Fists often came with fighting, so he instead bit his lip until he tasted blood.

"I haven't found a new home for you yet," the man said, "but I am looking. I only tell you this now so that you could have time to pack up your things. I wouldn't expect to be here by the end of the week."

Again, Griffin said nothing. He began to pick at the string, waiting for the man to say anything else. The man sighed and told him that he was free to go. Gladly, Griffin got up from the chair and hurried to his room.

Thankfully, there were no other children in the room at the time, as the frustration was building up more than he could bare. He paced, rubbing his stone, for as long as he could until he could no longer stand it. With one quick turn on his heel, he jabbed his arm forward, and his fist went a couple inches through the wall.

He didn't let out a cry, but instead a deep breath as he sat down on his bed. His hand was throbbing, but he felt just a little bit better. Griffin knew that the hole in the wall would lead to more trouble, but in the moment, he couldn't bring himself to care. He was already being shipped out, and he did nothing to cause that one.

Sometime while trying to calm himself down, Griffin passed out, and the other children slowly crept by his bed on their way to theirs, careful not to wake him up. However, in their hurry to slip by unnoticed, none of them saw the state of the wall.

In the morning, Griffin didn't feel any better. He slept well, but his frustration was still filling him up like a water balloon, ready to burst. He knew that punching the wall again would do nothing, and instead tried counting to ten as he got ready for school. It hardly worked either, but he continued anyways. By the time he got to his first class, he had already gotten to ten over a thousand times.

The counting made him unable to focus to the teaching and caused the others to whisper about him. He could hear Charlie mummer something about him being a freak. When class finally ended, Griffin wasted no time gathering his things and making a beeline to his locker.

However, he wasn't fast enough and Charlie met him there.

"Hey, psycho," Charlie said loudly, and pushed his hands hard against Griffins back. Griffin's already injured fingers smashed into the frame of the locker, and he instantly dropped everything in his arms. The hallway became eerily quiet.

"Hey… Leave him alone," a voice from behind Griffin said, but not in his favor. "Seriously, don't push him. You don't know what he'd do to you."

Griffin pulled out his necklace then and grasped it tightly. He had often wanted to punch Charlie, but it had never been so hard to resist. Quietly, he bent down and tried to pick up his things. Charlie kicked them hard enough that they slid almost to the end of the hallway. The students surrounding them held their breath.

"Are you just going to ignore me then?" he yelled, and with one swift kick, pushed Griffin on his back.

It was then that Griffin was forced to look up at him as he slowly sat up. As their eyes met, Griffin saw a change in Charlie's expression, a sudden moment of fear. Quickly, Griffin looked away and, quickly, Charlie tried to get over the emotion.

"I-I'm not afraid of you!" Charlie said, partly to himself. "Everyone here acts like you're about to punch them but I'm not scared. You think you can just scare everyone but you can't!"

Griffin stayed silent. The hallway was silent. Charlie's voice was shaking.

"You just say nothing and stare everyone down," Charlie continued, "while rubbing your stupid necklace."

In one motion, Charlie bent down and lifted the stone from Griffin's shirt. Griffin didn't have enough time to stop him before the leather snapped behind his neck, and the necklace hung free in Charlie's hand. There was fear there again in Charlie's face, but before he let it consume him, he flung the stone as hard as he could. The sound it made hitting the end of the hallway echoed.

It almost felt as if someone had struck a match inside Griffin. He had felt anger before, but nothing ever like this. At first, he was immobilized by it, but he could fill the fire building up, and he knew he was going to punch him. The crowd around him started stepping back slowly, as if they also could feel the flames. With the last bit of his will power, Griffin stood, swung his fist, and managed to aim into the locker instead, inches from Charlie's face.

He pulled his hand back and saw the dent he left in the metal but felt nothing in his hand. His breath was staggered and he could feel the fire building up again. He was right in his thinking. The violence was some kind of uncontrollable high. Against his will, a yell ripped out of his throat, and he punched the locker again. This time, the students started to run.

There was no way of him knowing how much time passed before the teachers stopped trying to calm him down and, instead, called the police. Griffin couldn't get himself to stop. There was a new rhythm to his violence, a simple kind of purpose that begged him to keep going. He punched the metal over, and over, and over again until he could tear the door clean off. Then it was a new mission of taking everything inside out, ripping up and breaking what he could, throwing what he couldn't. Then he moved to the next.

He was only slightly aware that he was screaming while doing this. He knew that there was a loud enough sound that he couldn't hear the begging of the police for him to stop, but he didn't fully recognize it. The officers soon gave this up and began to corner off the hallways so that no one was in the path of Griffin's rage. Regardless of his abnormal height and build, there was still something unnatural about Griffin's strength. The police were hoping he would tire himself out and gave him a wide birth to do so. However, they waited a very long time without him even slightly slowing down before, finally, allowing the pleading woman from outside in.

This woman had never met Griffin before, and Griffin had never heard of her, but she was desperate anyways. She was only driving by the school from the store when she saw the shocking amount of police cars in the parking lot. Knowing that a few of her own kids were inside, she forgot about the groceries in the back seat and drove her car as close as she could. As she exited her car, she saw an officer talking to a plump, teary-eyed boy.

"O-okay, yeah, I took his necklace," the boy cried, "but I didn't know he would just go crazy!"

"And you said he's been violent in the past?" the officer asked him.

"No. Yes! Sort of," the boy answered. "You should see the looks he gives all of us, like he wishes we were dead. He has blood-red eyes you know. I'm telling you; he'd rip me to pieces if you let him!"

"Excuse me," the woman interrupted, and the officer turned her way and sighed. "What exactly is going on in there?"

"Ma'am, there is just a little incident with a student, but we got it all under control," he answered. "So, if you would just get back into your car and- "

"Incident? My children go to school here, so what's going on?" she persisted.

The officer sighed again. "There was an altercation between this boy here and another inside. He seems to be in some kind of trance. Ripping the lockers from the wall and what-not. But he can't continue for long and when he stops we'll- "

"You have to let me inside," she demanded, which only made the officer laugh.

"Ma'am, I promise, your children are safe. Let us do our job and please get back into your car," he answered.

"What about the boy?" she asked. "He's clearly in distress and you're just going to wait him out? If your men aren't going to do anything, at least let me try."

The officer laughed at her again, and this time demanded that she back away, but she would not. She insisted that she was a case worker, and the little bit of Griffin's screams that she could hear stabbed at her heart. She was not going to leave and she was going to force her way inside.

After about an hour of waiting, the officer finally caved. Hesitantly, they let her inside.

Upon actually witnessing Griffins rage, she lost a little of her nerve. She couldn't see his face, but his sheer strength at such a young age was enough to worry her. However, he didn't seem to notice that she was coming up behind him, nor did she think he would care. Though she had never met a kid who could rip down lockers before, she had seen this kind of anger.

Slowly, she approached him from the side and tried to get a glimpse at his face. She did see the blood-red eyes that the boy from outside talked about, but what really broke her heart was the tears streaming down his face. Griffins screaming no longer sounded like anger to her, but more like intense sobbing. Carefully, she placed one gentle hand on his shoulder, and softly said his name.

Instantly, Griffin froze. Behind them, an officer started to step in, one hand on his weapon, but the woman waved him back. Griffin's screaming had stopped and he realized his throat and ears hurt badly. He tried for a deep breath, but his nose was clogged with snot.

"Sweetheart," the woman tried again, now squatting down to level with him more. "Are you okay?"

The sobbing that came out of Griffin then was no more in his control than the anger was. His whole body shook as he let it out, much quieter than before. He tried to lean his head against the lockers to cry, but the woman wouldn't let him. Instead, she tugged on him hard enough to pull him into her arms. Though he knew he still had the strength to push her away, he found that he didn't want to.

From over her shoulder, he could see the damage that he had done, and was instantly filled with shame. He had come so far only to be so violent in the end. Why couldn't he control himself? What was wrong with him?

"It's going to be alright," the woman promised, and let him cry as much as he wanted.

After he got control of himself a little better, he gently pushed back from her and tried to hide his face. This, however, was not going to happen with her, and she gently pulled him up and started to wipe away his tears. For the first time that he could ever remember, someone looked right into his eyes, and smiled.

"You're going to come with me, okay?" she said, taking his hands. "Don't worry about all of this, because I got it."

Griffin looked down again, only this time to hide more crying, but nodded.

Pulling at his hand, the woman helped him step over the debris and around the officers. A few of them tried to protest her, but a stern look and a promise to be back after she got Griffin settled, made them back off. Carefully, she got Griffin to sit in the passenger seat of the car and buckled him in. The engine was still running from her hurry to get to the building and the AC made the tears on Griffin's cheeks ice-cold, but soothing.

"I'll be right back," the woman promised with a smile, and she gently closed the door.

Griffin watched her only for a little while as she reapproached the officers. They seemed to instantly start to argue and he couldn't bare to watch it. She was going to get in trouble over him, he was sure. Then, one mistaken glance over to the group of students who had evacuated outside, almost made him vomit with guilt. Their faces held nothing but fear.

Outside, the woman finally argued enough with the men that they agreed to let her take Griffin. She dreaded the paperwork and court visits ahead of her but didn't regret anything of what she did. Looking back to her car, she could see that Griffin had started to hug his knees to his chest and cry some more. Hearing from his teachers that he was only eight, mute, and extremely isolated only broke her heart more. Suddenly, she remembered one last thing she had to do and raced back into the building.

When the woman came back to the car, Griffin had cried himself out. He now only felt numb, which was a great deal better than the overwhelming fear and guilt he felt before. He had chosen a spot outside his window and focused in on it, not looking at the woman as she got in.

"I got something for you," she said, but he still did not turn. She decided not to push it too much, but still took one of his hands and placed the object in his palm. Reluctantly, Griffin looked down and saw his necklace that she had went back in for. The string was still snapped but the woman had knotted it nicely enough for a temporary fix. "Whenever I can, I'll get you that knew string, okay?"

He did look up then to see that her face was genuine. The guilt came back in with full force but followed itself with confusion. Griffin waited, but his stare never made her smile change. Gripping his necklace tightly, he said his first, real words in many months.

"Thank you."